WRB-2.0

I pre rig my finesse drop shot and Slip shot rigs. Tie a weedless wacky hook on another spinning combo when I get to the lake, no soft plastics yet. Tie on a jig no trailer yet. Tie on a Hyper Weld clip on my M/F casting rod. When I launch check out the water clarity, temps and survey the marina area for bait and fish depths. Now I am ready to make up my mind where to start and what soft plastics and colors to try 1st. Now based on the input from the marina survey I run to a starting location, sometimes it’s the marina! Don’t like to run around to determine what to use or where to start like to be ready to fish. Adjust as needed Tom

I don’t like jigs on flat bottom area, needs a structure break. Difficult to get deep diving crank baits to stay down 30’. 3” to 5” flutter spoons like Blade Runner work good by ripping and let fall back, 3/4 oz Scrounger jig with 6” Sluggo in Shad color can cover deep depths very effectively at various speeds. That would my 1st choices. Tom

What is your sons age? Tom

Suggest staying with your original plan to go to Florida. The weather is more predicable, more good smaller kayak water to fish closer together, plus it’s pre spawn. Texas the windshield time will reduce your fishing time and the weather is less predicable for kayak fishing. Your goal seems to be quality time to enjoy fishing, less driving is less stress. Enjoy, Tom

7’ rod helps casting distance and higher modulus rods helps to detect bottom lure strikes. You have already met your goal👍 I recommended the 2 lure types to focus on that can be fished anywhere near surface to bottom adjusting retrieve speed. The worm is a bottom contact lure, the hula grubs can be bottom or swim them, easy to carry. You may have caught a spawn bass, the deeper water nearby will hold that size bass year around. Tom PS, you need the 3 wise 🙈

Thank you👍 primarily fishing from shore and local ponds, time permitting near shore from belly boat or kayak, no sonar. Don’t know about your tackle ? The fact you are going to school and focusing on studying (hopefully) fishing time is limited. Adult size bass make up a smaller % of the population then the bass you are catching, the bigger they the fewer. My suggestion is focus using 1 rod/reel combo and Texas rigged soft plastics. T-rig being a 3/0 good quality sharp worm hook and 3/16 oz sliding bullet weight. Yamamoto 5” Hula grub #221 & #301 Barkley 7 1/2” Power worm Blue flake. Fish these by fan casting in front of you starting about 3’ away from the bank all the around to 3’ in back of you. Start with any point area or near the dam. Tom

If you are catching juvenile size bass move. LMB tend to group by size or year class, females being larger size. You are located in North Carolina good LMB State. Are you a shore angler? Fishing ponds or a lake? Tom

Before we get deep into the woods what do you consider older fiberglass bass boat? Size? Early 90’s is now 30 years ago and the name brands didn’t use any wood in the transom by that time. Your budget is limited on a fixed income and you are doing your research by asking the questions. Take your time and be willing to travel to find the right used older boat. Single owner boats that were garaged are hard to find but they exist, Bass boat includes OB engine and trailer, the engine needs to be checked out by someone who knows them well, if you don’t. Good time of year to be shopping boats. Good luck, Tom

Set the drag at 1/3rd the mono/FC strength or not over the rods lifting power* and use the same reel hook set for everything. Just adjust the rod sweep force for single hooks. Vertical hook sets use the rod line is already tight. * ML = 2lbs, M = 3 lbs, MH= 4 lbs, H= 5 lbs.

Learned a long time ago the rod cross their eyes hook set applies very little force to the hook. I described the reel set with rod sweep in a 1986 In-Fisherman article A Rare Chance for a World Record Bass, lake Isabella CA. The Reel set is lower the rod tip pointing at the lure while reeling fast to get the line tight and hook point started the a firm rod sweep to complete the hook set. I demonstrated this hook set in 1974 during a presentation on my Cosmic Clock and Bass Calendar. I had a good angler do his cross the eyes hook set across the room while holding my jig between thumb and index finger, the jig didn’t move. I used a piece of 2 x 4 and had the angler hold it with my jig hook point slightly sticking in the wood. I did me reel set and rod swing yanking the 2 x 4 nearly out of his grip and hook penetrated past the barb. This is I manage to hook giant bass after casting over 120’ using 10 or 12 lb mono line. Tom

Welcome to BR! Upper right corner there is a search bar try Tips on buying a boat video by Glenn. Tom

I had a few honey boles back in day that held big bass that didn’t attract other bass boats. The few boats that did just fished past them without stopping because the spots didn’t standout to them. Today the FFS would possibly reveal the big bass. I had to fish these spots from near the steep walls casting outward to specific structure elements and it required repeated casts to get those big girls to strike. So I was at those spots a few hours but a low traffic area that was passed by. My favorite spot was the “old folks home” where I caught several giant bass over the years. Tom

2024 US Open was held last week at lake Mohave Colorado River lake below Lake Mead/Hoover power supply dam. Winning weight for 3 days was 61.74 lbs all Smallmouths. Top 3 had 61+ lbs using drop shot w/FFS. Pre/Full moon bright sky, little to know current on the lake. Tom

Use marabou feathers. Tom

As stated earlier my experience with Smallmouth bass is limited with that noted watching tournaments in the Great Lakes area including St Lawrence River bright sunny days the catch rate and weights go up, cloudy weather shuts down the bite. Hard to argue with tournament results. The TVA area results are the opposite, cloudy weather tends to improve results. Tom

Back in mid 80’s when P-Line came out with CXX copolymer/FC blend line was very popular and less expensive the Maxima UG copolymer line. Very good knot strength, good abrasion resistance about the same memory as UG but…hook set impact strength in the 6 lb and 8lb wasn’t as good. I went back to UG and never looked back. Yo-Zuri is true co-extruded hybrid line with copolymer core and fluorocarbon outer jacket. The co-extrusion process increases the finished line diameter compared to most other brands per lb test. Yo-Zuri has kept the cost down making popular. Larger dia per lb test is a deal breaker for me. P-Line offered FluoroClear as a hybrid, FC outer jacket. FluoroClear is more expensive then Yo-Zuri Hybrid and doesn’t perform as well imo. CX is a FC Copolymer blend like CXX but softer with less memory to target spinning reel users Tom

The color purple has been my favorite but not just any purple. My purple isn’t wine red purple or dark grape purple, it’s Rit dye #13 purple similar to the old Stren box purple. Back on the day Vinyl skirts had 2 purples a red wine purple and a more violet purple, it!’s the violet purple that bass preferred where I fished. In the late 80’s that Action Worms came out with purple thunder that was my purple with gold, silver and black flake this would become my go to soft plastic color. Screamers Reapers Flutter Craft curl tails Tom

Not all bass will strike artificial lures ever. Understanding bass behavior will help solve over pressured fishing. 1. Catch & Release doesn’t mean release healthy some bass don’t survive being caught. 2. The bass population isn’t all adult size bass and the larger bass are females. The adults are abou 25% of the population. In a pond with heavy pressure every bass angler is targeting the 25%, how many adult size bass do you think this pond has? 3. Fish at night and you have the pond to yourself. Tom

Fall turnovers occur in warmer climates like SoCal where the water column doesn’t get colder than 50 degrees. Cooler water on top warmer water created by colder night temperatures coupled with cooler days flips the water column creating a turnover. It’s easy to tell when that happens from the smell of clumps of decaying bottom debris floating near the surface. What occurs is the entire water column mixes becoming the same temperature for a few weeks. The fishing during this few weeks is very slow because the entire ecosystem is adjusting to the temperature change and lower dissolved oxygen. Windy weather usually curs the low DO activating the bass. I just go to a different lake for a few weeks during turnover period. Fish as often as you can while you can. Tom

We call a bass jig with a Colorado #1 blade attached to the hook bend using a small swivel clip a Matty. 30+ feet of water I would a 1/2 swim jig Matty and swim/hop along the bottom. Tom

Lots of finger pointing going on during late 80’s to early 90’s at both lakes Casitas and Castiac regarding using illegal live bait. The handful regulars at Castiac were Bob Crupi, Danny Kadota, Gary Harrison ( guide), Dan Sampson were on the lake everyday during March. Each angler had their well known areas and camped out on them using live crawdads. Never witnessed the regulars using live trout but watched it happen by other anglers. March is a rainy month in SoCal with fronts coming and going creating unstable weather but it was also the height of pre spawn at Castiac. Casitas was a month earlier in February and most of the same group of anglers except Crupi* were there plus local guides. You get to know these guys and leave them alone ( lower profile the better). Since I was fishing jigs was mobil moving around avoided the anchored bait anglers as much as possible unless I was there 1st. Tom *the late Bob Crupi was a cop who took the month off to fish. Kadota and Sampson were San Diego skippers and Fed/March was their off season.

I believe a Dottie size bass was in Casitas during mid 80’s and we missed the opportunity to catch her. We forget the mid 80’s was 40 years ago before swimbaits were created. A few early swimbaits were around and kept secrets. The trophy angers back then used live crawdads anchoring on spots known to hold big bass. If the WR bass was hooked using a crawdads it more then broke the line. Casitas had areas closed off to fishing and a WR bass would have lived in a sanctuary area. Lake Castiac had a WR bass a few anglers had a shot at catching including yours truly. Can’t make a mistake with giant bass they will break your line and heart. To those anglers who wouldn’t want a shot at a WR during the zoo period I understand. Tom

Inline spinners; Blue Fox, Panther Martin, Mepps are good. Yo-Zuri Pims minnow and original Rapala both Floater and CD’s. Spoons; Thomas Bouyant, Phebe and Little Cleo work good. Tom

IF I still had my boat it could be arrange to fish the closed area without other boats. Need to check If that is still possible. Tom

Castiac is a small 2 + mile 2,235 acre 2 arm V shape lake and very deep with steep rocky banks and a few humps. Being deep with cool water the lake supported biweekly stocking of hatchery Rainbow trout. The lake to fishing in 1973 and was stocked with adult size Northern LMB from Van Norman water supply reservoir and Florida strain LMB from San Diego lakes. Lots of high protein prey and excellent fresh genetics created good population of big bass grew to be some giants. The perfect storm. 1993 MWD decided a 20 year inspection and gate repair was needed to the Fore bay dam located at the end of the Ski Arm. The lake behind the fore bay dam (Elderberry) was used to pump water between Pyramid lake and Elderberry to manage water supply. The Elderberry dam repair occurred when Castiac was at 1/2 full pool. Releasing water from Elderberry into Castiac resulted a too much pressure on the fore bay dam the engineers decided to open the gate releasing all the Elderberry water into Castiac. The result was thousand of big Stripe bass were dumped into Castiac changing the predator pry ratio in favor of Stripers, the LMB suffered and never recovered. Casitas is older opened in 1958 and 2,730 acre deep rocky lake similar to Castiac with 1 big island. FLMB were introduced in 1970 and like Castiac Rainbow trout were stocked biweekly. The FLMB grew fast and 21 lb 3 oz was caught in 1982. Fishing pressure was intense at this time. 2008 Quagga mussels were discovered in nearby lake Piru and Casitas shut down stocking trout and crawdads. The state would close fish hatcheries about this time do to a law suit that only indigenous fish could be stocked. The result without the Rainbow trout stocking the big bass didn’t survive and the population crashed. Casitas also went into a drought and mismanaged when it did rain no water was reverted from the Ventura River into the lake. 2 years ago Casitas was 30% pool. The lake was allowed to devert water and today it’s 100% pool and the LMB are recovering slowly and could be good the next few years. Tom